Up to the challenge. Renee O'Connor (left, with Lucy Lawless) enjoys 'Xena' but wants
to expand her acting horizons.

Fireballs, cranky gods: It's why 'Xena's' pal loves
her job

By Ian SpellingNEW YORE TIMES SPECIAL FEATURES

And baby Eve makes three. on six.

"There are babies everywhere,'-
says Xena: Warrior, Princess a,, star Renee O'Connor, referring to the impact of
Eve. newborn daughter of Xena (Lucy Lawless), who arrived a few weeks back as an
immaculate conception in the episode "God Fearing Child:-"We've had about four
different babies playing this one character.

"It's really amazing," she
adds. "I don't think that I will ever need to have children of my own, because they
me around me all the time."

Speaking by telephone from her New
Zealand home on a rare day off turn the syndicated hit, O'Connor cracks up,

"'The great thing," she says
of the babies, "is that you get to give them back at the end of the day."

The advent of Eve came in the wake of
Lawless' real life pregnancy, which culminated on Oct. 18, 1999- with the birth of Julius
Robert Ray Tapert. The baby's father is her husband, Xena creator/Executive producer Rob
Tapert,

Of course. the ramifications of Lawless'
maternal joy were felt well before the actual onscreen and offscreen deliveries. To
accommodate Lawless during her pregnancy- O'Connor handled more of the fighting and action
sequences than usual. Post-Julius as Lawless luck some time off to recover and be with her
family, several well-received episodes focused almost exclusively on Gabrielle (Xena's
faithful sidekick).

"I just latched onto anything I
could get and really bit my teeth into it all," O'Connor says '-It's obviously been
the most I've worked in the entire run of the show, but it's been a great opportunity for
me. both physically and as an actress.

` Gabrielle has been fighting for three.
in a sense, just rent of sheer obsessiveness, to protect us all;' the actress adds.

"Now that we are going back to
being more of a Xena driven show again, I have been fulfilling my own desires by doing
theater scenes and anything else I can out of work, at the end of a 14-hour day on the
show.

"If the energy is there, I think,
you are always willing to do whatever you can, just to grow as a performer end to have a
good time," she says. "That's what I'm looking for - I always want to have
fun."

O'Connor promises plenty more fun in the
latter part of Xena's fifth season. Much of it will involve Eve, whose recent arrival
threatens to herald the twilight of the gods - in other words, she may cause Zeus, Hades
and Ares to lose their power over mankind.

"We are going to have all sorts of
twists and turns," O'Connor promises. 'And I'm sure that we'll have this huge finale
in which we try to kill off all of the gods.

"Next. season will actually be the
one that I am most curious about,- she adds, "in terms of what direction we'll go in
and what new enemies the writers will create to continue the show. We've always had plenty
of angry gods to deal with, but next year should be a very interesting challenge for
everybody

O'Connor figures that Xena will be
around for another year or two, and she's definitely up for it. After all. there are still
butts aplenty to kick, character traits to explore, episodes to direct and stranger
than-strange experiences to savor.

"Every day on Xena is strange:'
says O'Connor, who spent a recent comic episode, "Married with Fishsticks"
portraying Crustacea, a mermaid with three fishy kids. "There is always something
that makes me sit back and laugh, because I just can't believe I'm doing it.

Yesterday, for instance, I was sitting
at the bark of a cart that they had attached to a truck, ' she recalls. `We were getting
ready for the shot, and the director was yelling, 'And a gigantic plasma fireball is
coming at you from the left!'

"You've just got to laugh;' she
concludes. 'I have to think, This is my job: Every day there is something just like that
and I love it"